Bite Me (36 page)

Of course, this wasn’t the time to tell her all that. She might be up and walking around, but she was still recovering, and he could see the exhaustion on her face. So any talk about what their future together might hold would have to wait.

Unable to say what he really felt, Vic just kissed Livy on the nose and said to Balt, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Smith!” Cella snapped. “My brother said he’d take your car to his body shop and fix it. And one of those badgers already handed over an ungodly-sized wad of cash to pay for everything Barinov’s roar destroyed, including your car. So enough with the dog whining like you got your paw stuck in a gopher hole.”

“I can fix my own car, Malone. It’s just, you don’t mess with a woman’s automobile. Do you have any idea how much work I put into that thing after I won it from Sissy Mae?”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, thank you very much.”

The pair sat on the stone wall that partially surrounded the house Cella had grown up in. The rest of the fence and the gate were chain-link and could hardly handle the combined weight of Cella and Dee-Ann’s collective asses.

“What’s really going on with you?” Cella finally asked the female who’d somehow managed to become a very good friend. Although that still surprised her. Because Dee-Ann was such a canine sometimes.

“What?”

“It’s not just your car that’s bothering you. Is it what happened to Livy?”

“Not really.”

“As always, such a caring person.”

“Look, the whole thing don’t sit right with me. I mean, to outright shoot that girl.”

“You expected more from Whitlan?”

“Darlin’, this is no longer about Whitlan. Those bears tracked Kowalski down at the Sports Center. And they were out-of-town bears, not even from this country, but they found her anyway.” Smith turned a bit so she could look right at Cella, and leaned in a bit. “And don’t it bother you a little bit that our bosses pulled us off the Whitlan case?”

“They didn’t pull us off . . . they just gave us other jobs and lowered the priority of the Whitlan case.” Cella winced. Even she couldn’t make that sound positive. But still. “Dee-Ann, you can’t possibly think that KZS, The Group, and BPC—”

“Are busy protecting Frank Whitlan?” She shook her head. “Nah. That don’t sit right with me, either. But something about all this seems . . . expected somehow. By everyone but us and that poor little honey badger.”

“Poor little honey badger, my hefty Irish ass. She walked out of the surgery without even a limp. Jai said she took sixteen bullets out of her.
Sixteen!
Who gets up from that?”

“Well, we better start talkin’ to her and Barinov, if we want to know what the hell is goin’ on.”

“Cella?”

Cella looked over her shoulder to see her mother standing on the porch. “What’s up, Ma?”

“I was about to order food for all those badgers . . . but they’re gone.”

Cella twisted around. “What do you mean, gone?”

“I mean, they’re gone. We searched the house.”

“I just saw them no more than thirty minutes ago, Malone,” Smith said. “No way they would have gotten past either of us without our knowing.”

“Did you check the yard?” Cella asked her mother.

“We haven’t searched it, but I’m sure I’d spot that many people standing in our backyard from the dining room window.”

Cella looked at Dee-Ann, and they both jumped from the stone wall and ran around the house to the backyard.

Her parents’ house was surrounded by Malone family homes on both sides and in the back. So Cella assumed that the badgers must have just snuck out that way rather than going through the front. She decided to ask the uncle who lived behind her parents first, since she could see him in his backyard taking out the trash. But as Cella ran across the yard, she felt the earth go out from underneath her and used the power of her legs to launch her body across the yard. She landed a good ten feet away and spun around to see that Smith had not been so lucky.

Cella ran back, stopping at the edge of what she realized now was a pit in her parents’ backyard. A pit Dee-Ann Smith had fallen into face-first.

Crouching, Cella looked down at the poor She-wolf just getting back to her feet. “Are you okay?”

“Why is there a pit in your backyard, Malone?”

“There wasn’t.” She gestured with an arm wave. “Look behind you.”

Smith did. Then, with her arms thrown up, she exclaimed, “They
burrowed
out of here?” Dee-Ann looked at Cella.
“Burrowed?”

“Clearly this whole thing doesn’t sit right with the honey badgers, either.”

“Or Vic. He and that giant panda went through here, too.”

“Any suggestions where we go from here?”

Smith held up her finger, and still facing Cella, she jumped up and back. A skill only the She-wolf shifters seemed to have.

Landing on the side of the pit, Smith stood and lifted her nose to the air. She sniffed a few times, then headed over to Jai’s house, on the right side of Cella’s. Jai and her family were the only people unrelated by blood or marriage to the Malones allowed to live on this street.

When they reached Jai’s backyard, they found her, Blayne, Bo, Gwen, and Lock sitting at the patio table drinking big mugs of hot chocolate.

Smith stopped in front of the table. “Where are they?”

“Where’s who?” Blayne asked, looking particularly sweet. Something that Cella was certain was only going to piss Dee-Ann off.

Smith took an aggressive step. “Now listen to me, poodle—”

Bo slammed his fist on the table, which was thankfully made of stone rather than wood.
“Tone,”
he snarled at Dee-Ann.

The She-wolf’s eyes narrowed, and Cella quickly stepped in front of her while Jai softly excused herself, picked up her mug of hot chocolate, and went back into her house. She stood by the open sliding-glass doors so she could watch the entertainment, but she was a mountain lion. She wasn’t about to get into the middle of a predator fight unless she absolutely had to.

“We’re all friends here,” Cella reminded everyone. “So let’s calm the hell down.” Cella took a breath. “We just want to know where we can find Livy and Vic. We really need to talk to them.” The small group, three of which were hybrids, stared at Cella but didn’t say anything. “Are you really not going to tell us?” Cella demanded. “I’m your coach,” she reminded Bo and Lock.

“But you’re not asking as our coach,” Bo said. “Our coach doesn’t care because Vic and Livy don’t play for her team.”

“You guys, we just want to help.”

“Then leave them alone,” Lock suggested, his shoulders hunched. “I’m sure if at some point the honey badgers need you, we’ll all know.”

Yeah, but that was kind of what worried Cella. Because by the time they knew anything, it would probably already be too late.

C
HAPTER
31

L
ivy woke up in a strange bed and she knew she’d been placed there, because she would have put herself either under the bed or in one of the kitchen cabinets.

The last thing Livy remembered was sitting next to Vic in his SUV. Her body had been exhausted and she’d felt safe, so she’d gone to sleep. And based on the sunlight peeking through the blinds, she must have slept through the night.

Naked, Livy slipped out of bed. When she stood, she immediately felt how tight her muscles had become. Especially in her right shoulder, where she’d been hit many times as the gunmen had attempted to reach her head. That was the only thing that had saved her life. No clear head shot, which was the surest and quickest way to kill a honey badger.

Starting with her neck and shoulders, Livy proceeded to stretch out all those muscles. Moving down her body until she could easily bend over at the waist and touch her toes.

Livy let out a relieved sigh. It felt good to move. Hell, it felt good to breathe. She was even looking forward to shooting Blayne’s wedding. Then again, how could she ever think to complain now? It had been MacRyrie and Novikov who’d saved her life. Their timing had prevented the head shot she’d known was coming; Novikov’s fame among the Eastern Europeans had distracted the gunman while Livy got to her feet.

Of course, her behavior
after
she got to her feet might be considered an overreaction by most people, but by honey badger standards, Livy was just being true to herself. She felt a little strange about it, but she didn’t feel guilty. She would never feel guilty. She was just grateful she hadn’t had to deal with the cleanup. She hated cleaning up.

Still bent over at the waist, Livy wiggled her fingers and attempted to stretch a little farther down.

“Now I understand,” a woman’s heavily accented voice said from behind Livy, “what my son sees in you.”

Livy slowly rolled back up and turned to face the woman standing in the bedroom doorway. The tigress smiled at her, and Livy saw Vic in that smile. “You do not startle easily, I see. That is good.”

The She-tiger walked into the room, all the while sizing Livy up. “We were just listening to tales of your troubles. I was sorry to hear what happened to your father. I knew him, you know. We were not friends, and I am not surprised he died so young, but still . . . none of us should die like that.”

Vic’s mother was impeccably dressed in a designer suit, designer shoes, and with a designer handbag under her arm. Her long black hair with streaks of red, white, and gray was twisted into a perfect chignon. Her makeup was subtle but enhanced her brilliant gold eyes. Although she was in her early sixties, the woman dripped poise and elegance and sex. Raw, feline sex.

But Livy wasn’t fooled. This Siberian tigress was a hardened predator.

Now beside Livy, the She-tiger touched her shoulders and gently turned Livy around.

“Tsk-tsk. So many bullets. And yet you still live. But your kind has never been easy to kill.”

“Tried a few times, have you?” Livy asked, turning back around since she knew tigers always attacked from behind.

“We all have done things in our past we’d like to forget. I’m sure one day you will try not to remember shooting all those bears in the head and leaving their cooling corpses on the floor of your Sports Center.”

“They shot first.”

“Yes. Of course they did.”

“Is there something you want . . . um . . .”

“I am Semenova Gribkova-Barinov.”

“Please tell me you have a nickname.”

“My American friends called me Nova. Although I did not think my name would be a challenge for you.”

“Only if I have to say it every time I talk to you. So . . . is there something you want, Nova?”

“Just get dressed and come downstairs. We have much to discuss with you and your family.”

“I’ll be right down.”

The She-tiger walked out, and Livy started to grab clothes from a duffel bag one of her cousins had brought from Livy’s apartment. God, it felt like forever since she’d been back to that apartment. Was it even still standing, or had Melly returned and destroyed it?

Livy began to put her clothes on, but she hadn’t had a shower since the day before and she felt a little . . . icky. So she found the bathroom attached to the bedroom she was in, but froze in the doorway. She’d never seen a bathroom like this before. The floor was marble. The sink marble and stainless steel. There was an enormous built-in tub and a separate shower with glass doors and more showerheads than seemed necessary with temperatures that were managed digitally.

It was a really nice bathroom, if a little extravagant. For her taste anyway.

So Livy ended up taking a longer shower than she planned. Hard not to once she realized she could adjust the temperature of each showerhead individually.

By the time Livy had dried off and dressed and reached the first floor—from what she could tell, the place was four stories with marble staircases and lots of rooms and bathrooms—the arguing had already started. She could hear her Uncle Balt hissing at someone in Russian,
“Out! We don’t want your kind here!”

Livy walked down the marble-floored hallway, stopping briefly when she spotted Melly leaning against the wall and furiously texting on her battered phone.

“What are you doing here?” Livy asked.

“I keep asking myself the same damn question.” Melly glanced up, smirked. “Heard you got your ass shot up pretty good. Hope it hurt.”

“Suck my—”

“I said out!” Uncle Bart barked from farther down the hall.

Deciding not to get into a fight with her idiot cousin, Livy continued on until she found everyone in what she guessed was the library, based on all the books.

Vic—poor, poor Vic—was trying to be the peacemaker, trying to soothe her uncle. But she could tell Bart wasn’t about to soothed.

“I cannot believe you brought bear here! After what happened to my poor little Olivia!”

Vic, trying so hard to be reasonable, argued, “But this is my father.”

And that was the problem. Vic’s father and mother weren’t exactly friends of the Kowalskis and Yangs. There were several of Livy’s relatives doing hard prison time all over the world because of the Barinovs. A smart couple that could sniff out illegal activity by just knowing the right people and spreading money around when necessary. They weren’t even law enforcement. They did what they did on the side and made very good money at it. Sometimes working for the wealthy who wanted their stolen items back, and sometimes working for worldwide law enforcement. And the Barinovs were often worse than law enforcement because they had fewer rules to worry about, but much more brawn.